1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to file transfers between a workstation and a host computer and, more particularly, to the maintenance of consistent filename conventions between multiple hosts and intelligent workstations. Files are received from and sent to the host computer by workstations. An additional feature is the use of default file transfer options based on the file name which relieves the user from explicitly defining each of the parameters associated with a particular file.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The past several years have seen the growth of online workstations such as personal computers (PCs), the evolution of distributed processing, and the acceleration of information technology in many new application areas. The result has been an increase in the use of PCs as intelligent workstations in host environments and the need to manage files that exist on a PC workstation attached to a host.
One of the fundamental file management concerns is the transferring of files between systems. File transfer from one computing system to another has been accomplished by the user manually asking for the individual file to be transferred and specifying the required options for the transfer to be accomplished successfully. However, the options had to be remembered by the operator which often led to confusion, improperly translated files and poor utilization of disk space. In addition, there was very little standardization of file naming conventions.
The concept of standardizing filenames has been used in systems such as the Customer Information Control System/Operating System/Virtual Storage (CICS/OS/VS) Performance Analysis Reporting System/MVS product of the IBM Corp. This system uses an installation technique common to most IBM systems that run on the Multiple Virtual Sessions (MVS) operating system. The technique involves defaulting the filenames and file organizations of the files that are used by the Program Product. The Job Control Language (JCL) used to create the data sets and accommodate the program product have default names and other parameters defining the files. The JCL transfers data sets from tape to disk and maintains consistent filename conventions. Sample JCL is provided on the tape to relieve the user of the burden of defining each parameter associated with a file. However, this is a one time installation process and does not accommodate file transfers between workstations and host computers.
Techniques for managing a processor's disk storage system are also common. A good example of one such system is the IBM Systems Modification Program Extended (SMP/E) 5668-949 which is a tool for managing programs installed as described above. The tool is a Program Product that IBM's customers use to manage the installation and program updates of Program Products. The installation tasks involve defaulting many parameters and relieving the user of the change management burden. The SMP/E program does not provide any tools for managing additional copies of the programs for workstations or multiple hosts.
The Smartcom II product from Hayes Microcomputer Products provides a communication initialization menu that defaults all the parameters of a communications line to specific values based on common parameters used by many users. The parameters can be overridden by the user by typing over the entry. This technique relieves the user of the burden of remembering all of the parameters commonly used to support a communications session. The parameters are not coordinated with the particular workstation or host computer with which the user is trying to communicate. Therefore, the user must have enough familiarity with the communications environment to override the default parameters with the correct parameters, such as baud rate, parity, stop bits and so forth, that correspond with the particular device with which communications is to be established.
Ways of assuring the integrity of two files on the same processor are also known in the art. Two techniques are described in "System-Supplied Data Integrity" by J. A. Mortenson et al IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, vol. 25, no. 7B, December 1982, pages 3718 to 3721, and in "Data Base Security/Authorization Mechanisms" by A. M. Herzik et al., vol. 28, no. 3, August 1985, pages 942 to 947. These publications disclose ways of assuring consistency between stored data and the descriptive information associated with the data and management tools for securing data files and file descriptions. The article by J. A. Mortenson et al. describes a system that distributes any change in one file to all copies of the file under the control of the system. The article by A. M. Herzik et al. discloses a method for creating logical views of a file for updating and changing multiple copies of a file simultaneously.
None of these methods provides a method for managing data transferred back and forth between multiple hosts and workstations that relieves the user of the burden of specifically describing the data characteristics. There are host file transfer programs that allow a user to construct a list of files to be transferred, but there is no support for file transfer to dissimilar systems that are available to the user. There is no satisfactory solution in the prior art to the problem of transferring files between host computers and workstations.